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Biotech / Medical : SAFESKIN -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Apple12 who wrote (244)	3/13/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 828

are we doomed? just trying to get your attention.... fwiw, and while it's nothing that hasn't been said here before, the latest issue of smart money, the one with the aptly titled feature "hopelessly devoted" about this here website, has a blurb on safeskin as one of five health care stocks to consider. to wit: "Nearly two years ago in "Just What the Doctor Ordered" (June 1996), we railed against the popular notion that investors had to suffer the volatility of technology stocks in order to boost their long-term returns. Our advice? Check out health care companies. Over the prior 10 years that sector actually boasted better average annual returns than technology stocks--and did it with less volatility. . . . [W]e set out to find which of our past health care recommendations still make investment sense by using the following criteria: They had to have lived up to or surpassed our past expectations, they had to have strong growth prospects for the future, and they had to be reasonably priced compared with their growth rate. Consequently, we avoided past picks such as Merck and home health care provider Novacare because of the chasm between their growth rate and their price/earnings ratio. . . . Last on our list is the leading seller of medical-exam gloves in the U.S., Safeskin, which has had even more phenomenal growth than HBO. Since we picked the glovemaker in "Just What the Doctor Ordered," its share price has rocketed to $61 from $13, an increase of 379 percent. Not surprisingly, investors must pay top dollar for future growth, but we think it's worth it. Safeskin shares trade at 37 times estimated 1998 earnings, but earnings are expected to grow 28 percent annually over the next three years. And there are good reasons for its expensive valuation. Most important is the strong demand for its products. As the number of outpatient surgical clinics, nursing homes and the like have increased, so too have the number of protocols protecting patients and health care workers against the spread of infectious diseases. As a result, the market for hypoallergenic and particle-free surgical gloves has ballooned to more than $1 billion in the U.S. alone. Not surprisingly, Safeskin sales have benefited. They've jumped to an estimated $185 million in 1997 from $117 million in 1995."